by Alan Taylor
While I am boasting about the Citizens’ Theatre, I may go a little further and say something about its reputation. A reputation is a hard thing to assess. There is no human activity that produces such a diversity of opinion, informed or otherwise, as the theatre. Two experienced theatre-goers may see the same play. One may be entranced by everything he sees and hears, while the other is irritated and bored. The whole thing is mixed with illusion and emotion. But, out of this welter, a good reputation or a bad reputation arises and, when it does, there is no mistake about it. Almost within the last few months rumour has fixed us as the best repertory theatre in Britain.
That is enough boasting. Whether we have deserved this reputation or not we shall try to do so in future. We have only begun, though it is something to have made a beginning. If the Scottish Theatre ever comes into being, I hope that we shall be a lively, efficient, experienced part of it and that we shall have some credit for producing, even at this early stage, a superior sort of article, honest in purpose and sound in workmanship.
1951–1975
HELLO, DALI
A TALE OF TWO CITIES, 1951
Moray McLaren
The rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh is similar to that of sparring boxers; punches may be landed but they are not designed to injure. In the not-so-distant past a visitor might have remarked that in the former, people – invariably men – tend to wear blue collars while in the latter they always wear white. In Glasgow, moreover, it was more usual for working people to get their hands dirty. This was not so in Edinburgh, where ink was the only stain likely to adhere to exposed parts. Moray McLaren (1910–71), who was born in Edinburgh, wrote perceptively on his native heath. He worked in journalism and was the BBC’s first Programme Director for Scotland. During the Second World War he was attached to the Foreign Office as head of the Polish Region in Political Intelligence.
It is only forty miles from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Either by road or by one of the frequent trains it will not take you much more than an hour to travel between the two cities. You can do this several times a day if you feel so inclined; and a number of businessmen live in Edinburgh and go to their work in Glasgow. There are even some who do the reverse, sleeping in Glasgow and working in Edinburgh. There are also people whose work is evenly divided between the two and who have homes in each city.
The forty-mile belt that connects the two chief towns of Scotland passes through an on the whole dull landscape, undivided by hills, minor watersheds or rivers or any recognisable natural breaks. Scattered indeterminately upon its length are small towns and villages, most of them of nineteenth-century industrial or mining growth. There is not very much difference between them; for they are all products of the Glasgow–Edinburgh belt, and not of either city. Near Glasgow they become a little more conglomerate and grim. Nearer Edinburgh they lie about more starkly and individually scattered. It is difficult to tell, however, where the eastern Scotland influence ends and the western begins. Nor is it likely that anyone, save the most curious, has tried to discover. The journey by road or rail is too quick and too dull to merit much investigation or even attention.
And yet, the journey having been made, and having arrived in Glasgow from Edinburgh or in the Capital of Scotland from the great city of the West, one does not need to be curious or unusually observant to notice that one has passed from one world into another. All within the small country of Scotland and merely by travelling an easy forty miles. The differences between these two worlds are those of character, of East and West, of climate and appearance, but most of all of character.
The character of Edinburgh and the character of Glasgow, so vivid, so complementary to each other, are in their roots as Scottish as the characters of the Highlands and the Lowlands. For nearly a century and a half they have been as important in the general pattern of the character of Scotland as even the Highlands and the Lowlands were. It is impossible to know the Scotland of today without savouring the difference between the quality of Edinburgh and of Glasgow – and this is not because they are the two largest and most important towns in Scotland: it is because the difference between them is of the essence of Scotland.
THE DALI STORY, 1952
T.J. Honeyman
Spending money on art always has a tendency to bring frothing philistines to the fore. So it was no surprise when Glasgow Corporation decided to use public money to purchase Salvador Dali’s surrealist Christ of Saint John of the Cross that critics began to howl. Tom Honeyman (1891–1971), Director of Kelvingrove Art Gallery, pressed ahead regardless and persuaded the powers-that-be that this was an opportunity not to be missed. And so it has proved. Dali’s wonderful painting is one of many jewels that belongs to the people of Glasgow. Honeyman’s reputation and charm were such that he was able to attract several major gifts to the city’s galleries and museums, including the peerless collection of Sir William Burrell (1861–1958). Ironically, and sadly, Honeyman had to leave his post in 1954 after he lost the support of his political master, the new chairman of the Glasgow Corporation Art Committee.
Of course we expected criticism, but not quite the concentrated bitterness or irresponsibility on the matter of the purchase price, £8,200. The decision reached by the Corporation was not lightly taken. Glasgow wanted the picture and Glasgow had to pay the price, which, after considerable negotiation, was fixed at the lowest figure acceptable to the artist – the catalogue price had been £12,000. I remember that about the same time a small picture – in an imperfect state – Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery by Peter Brueghel was sold in auction for £11,025. Commenting on this Denys Sutton, then art critic of the Financial Times and now editor of The Apollo magazine, said ‘Its price, though high, bears greater relation to its value than the £8,200 paid by Glasgow for a painting by Salvador Dali.’ I still wonder who and what determines that. His and similar criticism led me to retort:
‘Some years ago a leading gallery in this country paid something like £12,000 for a “genuine” Old Master. It has now been discovered that the “Old Master” is still alive, and the picture now reposes in a basement as a “curio”. At least we know who painted Dali’s picture. Recently a collector paid an even larger sum for another “Old Master” which is a triumph of the art of the restorer. The “hand” of the master is buried in the velvet glove of contemporary pigments. Paint and canvas begin to undergo the perishing processes within a short time after the completion of a painting. By that token we should be able to enjoy “pure” Dali for a much longer time than some other expensive works.’
We also reproduced in the Art Review the pre-Raphaelite picture Christ in the House of His Parents or The Carpenter’s Shop by Sir John Millais which, not so many years previously, was bought for £10,500. It is in the Tate Gallery. The vicious contemporary criticism, including a piece by Charles Dickens, was also reprinted with a final comment from William Armstrong.
To the artists, including Augustus John, who deprecated this ‘wilful extravagance’ and deplored such a ‘mad price’ for a work by a living painter, we said something like this:
‘Extraordinary! Why do they not rejoice that, for once, the artist rather than the collector or dealer or their descendants reaps benefit from his labour? Salvador Dali is a man with an international reputation. His “news value” is at least as great as that of Picasso and Matisse and he considers this painting of Christ to be his masterpiece.’
A few months later it was reported than an English actor was to receive £40,000 for playing a part in a film.
The events of the art market of the last ten years, related to living painters, make it seem to appear that we had created a precedent.
Stephen Bone of the Manchester Guardian in reporting the distribution of works commissioned by the Arts Council said:
‘Will any of them reach Glasgow, a city that has just spent many thousands of pounds on a surrealist Crucifixion by Salvador Dali that no art critic could take seriously? After this sensational extravagance it may be
felt that Glasgow Corporation is a little ill-placed for receiving gifts from the taxpayer, but this would be a short-sighted view. Glasgow may soon feel the need of good modern paintings in its galleries.’
His was more than a short-sighted view, for no gallery in the country had acquired through its own limited purchase funds more modern works than Glasgow. True, like most of the others, we didn’t ride very high in sculpture. In recalling some very ill-informed criticism I am provoked into a bit of boasting to support our defence: or is it defiance? In my time and on my recommendation Glasgow acquired, by purchase, Blackfriars by Derain for £150 and a Utrillo for £450. Other French paintings by artists such as Cassat, Courbet, Gauguin, Marquet, Monet, Pissarro, Signac and Sisley came through the Hamilton Trust. They do not reveal the purchase price but I know all were between £1,000 and £4,000 at the most. We bought excellent examples of L.S. Lowry (in 1943 for £42 and in 1944 for £135). The works of a number of English and Scottish artists, when they were at the beginning of their careers, were acquired for very little expenditure. We like to think that to the ridiculously small sums might be added the value of an official gesture of support. From the Contemporary Art Society we received some good works, but as we were more distant than our English colleagues the first choices seldom came our way. The Arts Council never favoured us by adding works to the collection.
The Art School, staff and students, were with very few exceptions, particularly against the purchase of the Dali. Some of my University friends were convinced we had made a grievous blunder. ‘It will be down in the basement in three years’ was the prophecy of one of them. A few had no objections to the acquisition of a work by Dali. After all, he was a leader of a particular movement which was part of art history; but why did we not get a typical surrealist painting instead of this ‘non-characteristic’ example? One exasperated critic was certain we knew very little or nothing about surrealism.
THE DOUR DRINKERS OF GLASGOW, 1952
Hugh MacDiarmid
Were drinkers in Glasgow any more dour than those elsewhere? Arguably. There were certainly more drinkers and more places in which to drink. Nor was there much else to do in them. Until fairly recently drinking in Scotland was a serious business which was pursued single-mindedly. Unlike their English counterparts, Scottish pubs did not offer food and very little in the way of diversion. Hugh MacDiarmid knew of course of what he wrote. A thinker and a drinker, he was never more content than when throwing spanners into works and oil upon troubled waters. It was in Glasgow, for example that he dared make a controversial speech about Robert Burns, dismissing him as a voice from the past. Could it have been the drink talking?
I have never been able, despite repeated efforts, to understand the periodicity of complaints against the Scottish pub which have been made during the past half century. Made, I suspect, not by women or clergy-men, either by English visitors or by Scots who, as Sir Walter Scott said, ‘unScotched make damned bad Englishmen’. They are usually accompanied by envious comparisons of English inns, which we are told are far more sociable and cater to family parties in a way Scottish pubs do not. For, in the latter, at their most typical, the rule is ‘men only’ and ‘no sitting’ – you stand at the counter with your toes in that narrow sawdust-filled trough which serves as a comprehensive combined ashtray, litter-bin, and cuspidor. So it was when I first began to drink nearly fifty years ago; so it still is for the most part. Certainly nowadays, in addition to the common bars and to the jug (or family) departments to which women, mostly of a shawled, slatternly, and extremely subfusc order, still repair with all the ancient furtiveness, there are bright chromium-fitted saloon bars, cocktail bars, and other modern accessories in the more pretentious places. And even in most of the ordinary bars there is now a fair sprinkling of women not only of the ‘lower orders’ or elderly at that, but gay young things, merry widows and courtesans. Men (if you can call them that) even take their wives and daughters along with them to these meretricious, de-Scotticised resorts.
Now, I am not a misogynist by any means. I simply believe there is a time and place for everything – and yes, literally, everything. And like a high proportion of my country’s regular and purposive drinkers I greatly prefer a complete absence of women on occasions of libation. I also prefer a complete absence of music and very little illumination. I am therefore a strong supporter of the lower – or lowest type of ‘dive’ where drinking is the principal purpose and no one wants to be distracted from that absorbing business by music, women, glaring lights, chromium fittings, too many mirrors unless sufficiently fly-spotted and mildewed, or least of all, any fiddling trivialities of l’art nouveau. If there are still plenty of pubs in Glasgow which conform to these requirements and remain frowsy and fusty enough to suit my taste and that of my boon companions, in another respect the old order has changed sadly and I fear irreversibly. Our Scottish climate – not to speak of the soot-laden, catarrh-producing atmosphere of Glasgow in particular – makes us traditionally great spirit-drinkers. That has changed. Most of us cannot afford – or at that rate cannot get – much whisky or, for that matter, any other spirit. There are, of course, desperate characters who drink methylated spirits. I have known – and still know – resolute souls partial to a mixture of boot-blacking and ‘meth’, and I remember when I was in the Merchant Service during the recent War a few hardy characters who went to the trouble of stealing old compasses off the boats at Greenock (where we had the largest small-boat pool in Europe) in order to extract from them the few drops of spirit (well mixed with crude-oil and verdigris) they contained. But in Glasgow pubs today at least ninety per cent of the drinking is of beer – and mere ‘swipes’ at that; ‘beer’ that never saw a hop. I can remember the time when it was the other way about. What beer was consumed was used simply as a ‘chaser’ to the whisky in precisely the same way as a ‘boilermaker’ in New York. For of course you can get drunk quicker on whisky plus water than on neat whisky, and whisky and soda is an English monstrosity no true Scot can countenance at all.
There are other sorry changes in even the lowest-down pubs which in general hold to the grim tradition of the true Scottish ‘boozer’. The question of hours, for example. In London one can still drink legally twenty-three hours out of twenty-four. That is because London is a congeries of different boroughs which have different ‘permitted hours’ so that by switching from one borough at closing time it is easy to find another where ‘they’ will still be open for an hour or two longer. In Glasgow, moreover, unlike London, there are few facilities for drinking outside the permitted hours. For most people, that is. It will hardly be thought that I am pleading for decreased consumption, but I believe that the same amount of strong drink taken in a leisurely way over a fair number of hours is less harmful than the rush to squeeze in the desired number of drinks in the short time the law allows. Out national poet, Robert Burns, was right when he said: ‘Freedom and whisky gang thegither’. What he meant is precisely what my own motto means: ‘They do not love liberty who fear licence’. I speak for the large body of my compatriots who uphold this principle and regard respectability and affectations of any kind as our deadliest enemy. There are, of course, clubs and hotels, but the hoi polloi have nothing to do with either of these.
Only a few years ago there were also Burns Clubs which took advantage of a loophole in the law and did a roaring trade, especially on Sundays. You did not require to be introduced. You simply paid half-a-crown at the door and automatically became a member for the day. The difficulty – especially for the thirsty stranger within the gates, and indeed for the bulk of the citizens themselves – was to find these places. One heard about them. One heard, indeed, fantastic tales of the alcoholic excess which went on there. But they were exceedingly difficult to find. You had to be ‘in the know’. Suddenly they disappeared entirely. I have never been able to discover why. There was nothing in the press – and I could learn nothing over my private grapevine either – about police action having been taken. The
y must have been very profitable to those who ran them, and a substantial source of revenue to the ‘liquor trade’ generally. They served a very useful purpose since no one not a resident in a hotel and not a member of a club could otherwise get a drink in Glasgow on Sundays. (It was – and still is – jolly difficult to get a meal even.)
ARMAGEDDON IN GEORGE SQUARE, 1953
George Rosie
In his book Curious Scotland (2004), the journalist George Rosie (1941–) attempted to answer a number of questions that were haunting him. What became of the sons of Robert Burns? Why do people regularly spit on one particular part of Edinburgh pavement? And, more apocalyptically, what would have happened had an A-Bomb been dropped on George Square in Glasgow? The last-mentioned was in the context of the Cold War, when the world seemed to many to be on the brink of self-destruction. Suffice it to say, Glasgow would have borne the brunt of any nuclear attack on these islands.
I can never cross George Square without recalling a buff-coloured folder I came across by accident in the Public Record Office in Kew. Official documents are sometimes misleadingly described by journalists as ‘chilling’ when ‘mildly worrying’ would be more accurate. But this one was a chiller, without a doubt. Commissioned by the Scottish Office in Edinburgh from the scientists of the Home Office in London, it was an official estimate of what would happen to Glasgow if someone (the Soviets, presumably) detonated an atom bomb over George Square. It had the feeling of worried people trying to come to terms with a real possibility.
